project^ Receives $1.5 Million Grant as a Winner of the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize Competition

Share Article

project^, a Portland-based values-driven real estate developer, announced that they have received, on behalf of Framework, LLC, a one and half million dollar award from the USDA, Softwood Lumber Board and Binational Softwood Lumber Council for their submission, Framework, to the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize Competition.

Portland, Oregon (PRWEB)November 02, 2015

project^, a Portland-based values-driven real estate developer, announced that they have received, on behalf of Framework, LLC, a one and half million dollar award from the USDA, Softwood Lumber Board and Binational Softwood Lumber Council for their submission, Framework, to the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize Competition. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced the winners of the Competition at a press conference in New York City on September 17, 2015. Two winning development teams were granted a combined $3 million in funding to support the development of tall wood demonstration projects in New York and Portland, OR.

Beneficial State Bancorp -- which holds majority ownership positions in two community development financial institutions, Beneficial State Bank headquartered in Oakland, California, and Albina Community Bank located in Portland, Oregon -- has teamed with project^ and Home Forward to re-envision their Pearl District property in Portland, Oregon into Framework, one of the nation’s first wood high-rise structures.

The building seeks to develop a model for a sustainable urban ecology by promoting social justice, sustainable building, and economic opportunity thus yielding broad advancement of these objectives at a national scale. Framework is supported by a one and a half million dollar award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Tall Wood Building Prize Competition. The focus of the competition is to promote the use of domestically sourced engineered wood products in the United States, thereby increasing demand from domestic rural lumber mills, which will in turn boost their respective rural economies.

Framework, an urban + rural ecological project, is anticipated to be one of the first tall timber structures in the United States. Tall wood buildings stand to re-unite rural and urban economies in a beneficial symbiosis whereby value added wood products once again respectfully employ and empower rural communities while dramatically cutting the green house gas footprint of connected urban centers. This particular 12-story building will also enable one level of ground floor retail, 5 levels of office, 5 levels of workforce housing and a roof top amenity space.

The award will allow the project to engage the exploratory phase, including the research and development necessary to test the Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) process to allow high-rise mass timber construction in the U.S. This includes working with Portland and Oregon code authorities during the pre-permitting process to define and perform the necessary testing and peer review to demonstrate the feasibility of tall wood buildings. Careful attention to environmental sustainability will be maintained throughout. At a regional scale Framework will pave the way for future demand from Oregon’s rural communities with the harvest, milling and pre-fabrication of wood products.

From a community perspective, this building will support a unique blend of programming including an Albina Community Bank branch, aligned street level retail, office space for Beneficial State Bank and Albina Community Bank, B Corp businesses and social enterprise; along with public space and a significant proportion of workforce housing in partnership with Home Forward located in the Pearl District near employers. While the project is focused on the state of Oregon, its mission and the relationship between the urban and rural economy can be executed nationwide, benefiting cities and rural economies across the United States. The Framework team will work with the USDA, Softwood Lumber Board and Binational Softwood Lumber Council to develop a post-project tall wood building demonstration report, contributing to the advancement of knowledge in the building industry establishing a new construction prototype in the US.

The exploratory phase is expected to run through October 2016, with the construction phase beginning in October of 2016, and an anticipated December 2017 completion date.